Business and book website: wordwhisperer.net
Author of SETTLE FOR BEST: SATISFY THE WINNER YOU WERE BORN TO BE; SERVAL SON: SPOTS & STRIPES FOREVER; DeFOREST KELLEY: A HARVEST OF MEMORIES; FLOATING AROUND HOLLYWOOD; LET NO DAY DAWN THAT THE ANIMALS CANNOT SHARE(order at Amazon); and THE ENDURING LEGACY OF DeFOREST KELLEY(order at http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=382995)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Whew!

Fulfilled another project for an Elance client today, so I'm heading back into the black again after a couple months of very little work. Now I have three "regulars," not just one, so I expect this is the last time I'll find myself absolutely floundering as a self-employed copywriter. I feel a whole lot better! I'm not out of the woods yet financially, but it's a'coming -- I can feel it in my bones!Jackie has joined a workplace "Biggest Loser" contest so I'm her 5 a.m. accountability partner. We went for a 30-minute walk this morning, and will every day from now on. I'll try to get her to walk "my" route in a week or so because it's a 40 minute route (32 blocks) and that's what we need to start losing excess weight. I was walking the 32 block route twice a day up until we started yard work, tree clearing, and frequent bike riding several weeks ago; I figure the yard work and tree clearing alone make up for at least one of the 32 block walks! Our garden has peas, corn, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers and a couple different types of squash pushing up through the dirt now. And one of our tomato plants produced its first ripe tomato this past weekend; Jackie scarfed it down and called it "great. Mm-mmm... perfect." Well, would we expect anything less from a garden we planted and nurtured and sweated over? Of course not! That would be downright rude!Our grape arbor is greening out and some of the fruit trees already have little fruits on them. That's pretty good for the northern hemisphere this close to the Canadian border.Jackie planted the corn and carrots too close to each other; we'll have to thin them out at some point unless some wild bunnies do the honor (where the carrots are concerned). Jackie says I planted the second row of peas too far away from the wire fencing that they'll need to be tacked to at some point. Hey, we're new at this. It's gonna take a season or two to know the proper procedures. This is our first year as adults. When we were kids, Mom and Dad were in charge of the plantings, and that was fifty years ago. I don't think either of us were paying the least bit of attention back then. And of course, Jackie didn't read the seed packets. (I did, so I have no excuse where the peas are concerned.)What else? I'm getting 11% of the Elance projects that I bid in -- up from 2% a year ago. It helps to have certified test results, certified work background, and lots and lots of great reviews. It gives Elance buyers a good feeling to know that others have found my copywriting services exemplary. I am even being asked to bid on projects at a rate of one or two a day. I can't accept them all -- I don't qualify for all of them (I don't write in the real estate, IT, or finance sectors at all unless the client has specific talking points I can work from, because I have no working knowledge of those sectors) -- but it's great to be asked! Guess that's about all for this time. Oh! Two teenagers from other countries -- Italy and Germany -- wrote to me about De this week. They had more questions about him, some of which I couldn't answer (what was his favorite color, food, vacation spot), but most of them I could. I hope both of them will contribute to the second edition of ENDURING LEGACY because they're very young and it's positive proof that De's legacy lives on and on and on!

About Me

A
Pacific Northwest native, Kristine M. Smith transformed her copywriting
business from a struggling start-up to a going concern in near-record time.
Prior to launching her own copywriting business, Kris served as a fledgling copywriter
for a local on-hold script production company, where she won Employee of the
Quarter the last two quarters she worked there.

Kris’s
freelance writing career was launched by actor DeForest Kelley more than forty
years ago. It was Kelley and his wife Carolyn who encouraged Kris to try
Hollywood on for size, which she did from 1989 to 2003. Kris served as Mr.
Kelley’s personal assistant and caregiver during the final months of his life
and presented heartfelt sentiments about her mentor at Paramount Studios'
memorial service for him in 1999. She has written two books about him: DeForest
Kelley: A Harvest of Memories and The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley:
Actor, Healer, Friend. An enhanced version of Harvest with a new title and 50+ pages of riotous additional anecdotes will debut during Star Trek's 50th Anniversary in 2016.

In
Hollywood, Kris served as an administrative assistant and secretarial floater
to writers, producers and—later—information technology professionals at various
studios. Most of her Hollywood career was spent at Warner Bros. Studios in
Burbank where she served as an executive secretary for the VP of Software
Development and as a Hardware Lease Administrator. Kris’s most notable creative
endeavor at Warner Bros. was writing the copy for an intranet website to help
newly-arrived secretaries learn the ins and outs of serving on the WB campus in
record time. The website earned her a monetary reward and the coveted (don’t
laugh!) Carrot Award (Bugs Bunny runs da joint, ya know!); the accompanying Certification
of Appreciation was co-signed by the head of the Human Resources Department and
her boss.

The
author of seven books, Kris’s sixth title, Serval Son: Spots and Stripes Forever
(You are responsible for all you tame)—a cautionary true story about what it’s
like to own, and be owned by, a wild cat for seventeen years—reached the #2 and
#4 spots at Amazon in two niche categories when it debuted in September 2011.

Kris’s
newest title, Settle for Best: Satisfy the Winner You Were Born to Be, is a chapter-by-chapter
breakdown of the twenty commonalities of millionaire philanthropists as
discerned by Napoleon Hill in his seminal 20th century work, Think
and Grow Rich. Each chapter contains words of encouragement and
instructions to entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to leave a business,
personal, or family legacy that will resonate for generations to come. Settle
for Best stood at #1 in the Motivational Self-Help category at Amazon for three
days when it debuted.